


daytime's a drag

by resistate



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Eating Disorders, F/M, Food, Friendship, Happy Friendship Ending, Sochi-era, Unhappy Relationship Ending, brief Tessa Virtue/Ryan Semple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 14:58:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17409008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/resistate/pseuds/resistate
Summary: He ought to feel consumed by possibilities but instead he just feels—consumed. Scott, post-Sochi.





	daytime's a drag

**Author's Note:**

  * For [revolutionary_daydream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/revolutionary_daydream/gifts).



> For nikki, partner-in-crime, for her birthday <3
> 
> Prompt: _Scott gets sad because he knows he fucked up with Tess, so he makes poached eggs or some other dish that reminds him of her._
> 
> Thank you to @/anathefangirl for looking this over!

\\\

Scott stops eating toast after Sochi. It’s such a dumb thing; it’s so stupid, so ultimately inconsequential, and he knows exactly why it’s happening, but that doesn’t mean he can change anything. His throat threatens to close, and the contents of his stomach threaten to rise, if he even so much as looks at it; he’s definitely not going to eat it and risk actually puking. Not for _toast_. And fuck it, who cares anyway? He’s got bigger things to think about, like what the hell he’s going to do with rest of his life.

It’s because of Tessa, of course. He fucking knows it’s because of Tessa.

(He ignores that he doesn’t figure it out until a week before they leave for Japan. He wakes up from a dream he’s had more than once, the one where he’s waiting to take the ice for their free dance and Tessa’s not there, like always, except this time he can hear her calling his name. He turns and walks back down the tunnel in his skate guards but instead of seeing Tessa or even the usual hallway, he ends up at the entrance to the athletes’ cafeteria at Sochi. It’s more crowded than he’s ever seen it, and so noisy he could be at a hockey game, and he still can’t see Tessa. He can’t even hear her voice. He hesitates on the threshold, shivering, the freezing cold of the rink finally catching up with him.

 He wakes up, heart pounding, legs tangled in the sheets. It’s the middle of the night, an unfamiliar pattern of light sliding up the wall through a gap in the curtains. Scott blinks and it’s dark again. It stays dark. It must have been a lone car out on the road. He hears a soft, questioning noise and turns. Kaitlyn. He doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything, and in a moment she’s fully asleep again. He gets up to tug the curtains closed and get a glass of ice water. He’s still burning up after two glasses, so he pulls on sweatpants and goes outside. It’s freezing, but he stays standing on the balcony for a long time anyway, shivering and wishing he still smoked. He considers and rejects getting in the car and looking for a gas station or something open 24 hours. Too much effort.

He goes back to bed but when he closes his eyes all he can see is the look on Tessa’s face the morning after the exhibition skate, the split second where what he’d said made her look like she’d been punched in the stomach. She’d stared at him and then she’d shoved whatever was going on in her head behind her press conference face. He remembers his throat constricting and his stomach twisting when she’d turned that face on him. Tessa had excused herself without taking her tray and it was so unlike her to leave a mess behind that he’d stared at her half-empty cereal bowl in open-mouthed confusion. He remembers he’d been halfway through some toast he’d never finished. The blueberries Tessa had added to her bran flakes had turned the milk in her bowl purple. He remembers his confusion slowly giving way to anger because what right did Tessa have to look at him like that when—when—

It takes him six weeks to make the connection because it’s fucking _toast_ , and what the fuck does toast have to do with anything?)

//

Scott stocks up on bread when Kaitlyn’s due over because she almost always has toast with her breakfast. One bitterly cold Sunday he buys eggs and cinnamon and powdered sugar and makes French toast from a recipe he finds on the internet. Besides telling him to investigate career options, his therapist has been on his back about taking up a hobby or something. Scott likes eating well enough, he guesses, so he’s been making different things. At first, he thinks he might try a piece of his French toast because surely there’s only a tenuous connection between ordinary toast and toast covered in everything under the sun, but in the end, he can’t stomach the thought. He worries Kaitlyn will think it’s weird that he doesn’t have any. She looks at him a bit oddly, but she doesn’t say anything except _means there’s more for me_ , _I guess_ , and _everything_ delicious _under the sun_ , _Scott_ , and _you didn’t have to, but thank you_. They spend the day in bed or curled around each other on Kaitlyn’s sofa, dozing and watching ESPN. It’s nice. A week later Scott throws the rest of the bread, furred with mould, into the trash and thinks that if that’s the hardest thing about being with Kaitlyn, that she thinks he’s weird for not trying his own French toast, then he’s laughing.

(He ignores that that’s not the hardest thing about being with Kaitlyn.)

//

He doesn’t see Tessa after Sochi. They’d agreed they would rest and spend time with their families. They’d agreed to table the retirement question until after the Canadian tour, but he knows they both know the decision is inevitable, and waiting is a formality. He goes from seeing Tessa almost every day in the seven months before the Olympics to seeing her a handful of times in the seven weeks afterwards. They do interviews and appearances and lots of pretending that silver is good enough, but that’s it. Stars on Ice is in their diaries for the spring, but that’s the spring. He doesn’t see her outside of work. They don’t hang out. They don’t skate together. Sometimes they talk to each other, because Scott’s not that much of a fucking idiot, not anymore, but it’s either about work or it’s polite enquiries about each other’s families.

He’s knows he’s fucked things up with Tessa and he doesn’t know what happened or how to fix it.

(He ignores that he knows exactly what happened.)

//

Tessa’s always been the hardest thing in his life, but that’s because his whole life is skating and Tessa. His therapist tells him that was a choice and that now that he’s done with his competitive career, he can make different choices. Scott doesn’t bother telling his therapist that Tessa is also the easiest thing in his life. He doesn’t have any words to explain how this is true; he just knows that it is.

(He ignores what that makes his life now, when he never skates with Tessa, never sees Tessa.)

//

Poached eggs on toast had been the only thing she’d ever cooked for him, one Saturday when they hadn’t had practice and had stayed in bed all morning and into the afternoon. She’d been unexpectedly patient with Scott when he’d hung around pestering her by singing purposefully off-key to her Hall & Oates playlist and trying to make her dance with him. She’d made the toast from a loaf of bakery bread crusted with nuts and seeds and used French tarragon as a garnish for the eggs. The green of the herbs and orange of the yolks were dazzling shots of colour in Tessa’s bright white kitchen. He’d been almost scared to eat, it was so exquisite. He’d abandoned his second piece of toast in the end, unnerved by the way Tessa would look at him every now and then before dipping her eyes back to her plate, like she hoped for nothing more, ever, than that he would—what, like her cooking? Of course he liked her cooking, even if he did joke that she was trying too hard. He liked everything about Tessa.

(He ignores that this was the only time she’d ever cooked him anything. It hadn’t meant anything, and the following weekend he’d patched things up with Jess. Being with Tessa had been nice, but lots of things were nice.)

//

Kaitlyn makes them toast and jam for a snack because she’s well aware of his weakness for homemade strawberry jam and because she has a jar from Christmas that she’s opened and needs to use up. Tessa would have known that Scott likes his toast best with a thick layer of margarine between the bread and jam. They’d once had an entire conversation dedicated solely to breakfast foods between London and Canton, and Tessa would have known how Scott likes his toast, why he likes it that way, and the exact extent to which he will entertain toast make any differently. Scott would know the same for Tessa.

(He ignores that Kaitlyn would know too, if told her. He doesn’t, just waits until she’s in the washroom before throwing his toast in the trash, untouched.)

//

He doesn’t know what went wrong between him and Tessa, and Tessa’s no help. He tries calling her, but first she doesn’t want to talk to him and then, when he insists, she keeps saying that he needs to talk to his therapist or his girlfriend or his— _okay, no, maybe don’t tell Alma_ , Tessa says, and she sounds like she’s maybe crying on the other end of the line. It’s the kind of crying where she’s trying to hide that she’s crying, but Scott can tell. Or he thinks he can tell. It’s new, not knowing for sure what’s real with Tessa. What they had on the ice was real and was part of what made their programmes work, and what they had had off the ice was real too. Not the sex, whenever that happened, or anyway, not just the sex. Everything. Every touch, every word, every gesture of friendship had been real. Scott doesn’t understand how he’s supposed to know what’s real or not when Tessa isn’t even here. He knows he should probably stop talking but words keep tumbling out of his mouth and he can’t stop them, and Tessa’s stopped trying to pretend she’s not crying, and that’s not fair, that’s not—Scott was the one who had tried to make it real, and Tessa was the one—

He can’t stand to listen to Tessa crying, can’t stand that now is when she decides to be vulnerable, after, after—

He hangs up.

(He ignores that he was shitfaced when he called her. He wakes up the next morning with hazy, murky memories of Tessa sobbing on the other end of the line. He can’t remember a word either of them said. He doesn’t call her back, and she doesn’t call him.)

//

He wakes up one evening, eyes bleary, head aching, and stumbles to the kitchen for a glass of water. He’s finished his second glass when he sees the raw eggs. He pauses in the middle of swiping the back of his hand over his wet mouth. There’s a couple of eggs in the sink, smashed open and partly congealed, and more clinging to the inside of the window above the faucet. They’re at head height, at least a dozen of them, stuck through with pieces of brown and white shell. Sticky orange rivers flow between sticky translucent banks, all the way down to the tile backsplash. Scott pours himself a third glass and leans against the fridge, drinking slowly and squinting at the mess. He guesses it’s Tuesday, or possibly Wednesday, and Kaitlyn’s not due over until the weekend. Definitely a problem for future Scott, he thinks, flopping onto the couch and picking up the remote.

Later, he scoops the eggshells out of the basin and blasts the faucet, and after that the sink pretty much sorts itself out. He gets around to the window in a fit of restless energy the afternoon before Kaitlyn’s due. It’s on his list of things he needs to do to get the place in order, along with vacuuming and finally taking out the trash. He doesn’t know why he didn’t get around to any of it earlier; it’s not like he’s been up to much lately. At least the eggs haven’t really started stinking up the place or anything. They’re almost pretty, in a way, especially when the weak winter sun filters into the kitchen and turns them into the kind of weird modern art that the trashier Toronto papers are always getting bees in their bonnets about. He could have pulled the kitchen blind down any time over the past few days, but he hasn’t. Scott kind of likes modern art. The distinction between yolks and whites is almost non-existent, but there’s one long orange curve that looks like it could be a yolk, and a lighter trail of egg hugging the curve. The trail of egg is striated in a way that reminds Scott strangely of an excavation site. Further toward the backsplash there’s a section where the whites have formed a delicate crystalline pattern that makes him think of snowflakes, or ice.

The edge of his appreciation dulls when it becomes apparent the window will be harder to clean than Scott had anticipated. He had thought the eggs would have hardened through and could be scraped off, but instead they’re still tacky and stuck hard to the glass. He finally finishes, tipping the bucket he’s been using into the basin and watching globs of orange slide down the drain, and thinks, that’s one more thing done.

(He ignores that he can’t remember how he got home that night. The last thing he does remember is arguing with the asshole behind the bar refusing to sell him shots, or maybe arguing with one of his so-called friends about giving him back the keys he’d taken away at the beginning of the night. Then nothing.)

//

He starts spending less time alone and more time with Kaitlyn. He drinks less. When Kaitlyn stays over, he makes toast and freshly squeezed orange juice while she scrambles eggs, the sun through the kitchen window making her already light hair shine. He knows exactly how she likes her toast: number 5 dial on the toaster, real butter that he leaves out overnight to soften, slices cut on the diagonal and stacked on a separate plate from everything else. She tells him she loves him. He tells her he loves her too.

(He ignores that he doesn’t give a rat’s ass how Kaitlyn likes her toast. She tells him she doesn’t care how he makes her toast, and he believes her, but it’s something he has to get right anyway, for himself.)

//

They’re in Japan for Stars on Ice and it’s harder than he thought it would be, seeing Tessa, and easier. Easier because breathing is easier, somehow. He doesn’t have to think about it as much when Tessa’s there, except that every once in while a memory will still jump out and strangle him almost to the point of suffocation. Tessa holding tightly to his hand before the free dance in Sochi. Her hair falling like a curtain over her shoulder, onto his chest when she’d kissed him the next morning. The way she laughed in bed, sometimes: quiet and startled. He thought he’d heard all her laughs, especially after Vancouver, but this one had always felt like a secret, kept close to Tessa’s heart and shared only with Scott.

Harder because everything is hard, probably. He still has no idea what he’s doing once the Canadian tour starts and finishes.

They talk about skating, and small inconsequential things. A robin’s egg, small and blue and cracked open, that one of them had seen on the sidewalk that morning. Thirteen golf balls on someone’s front lawn, of all places: a ring of green separating each of the pocked white balls from the retreating snow.

(He ignores that they don’t talk about what happened in Sochi.)

//

It gets easier. Scott’s not exactly sure what he means by ‘it,’ except for everything.

(He ignores that he’s only truly happy when he’s skating with Tess. When they’re on the ice together, their bodies and minds are so much in sync that everything feels as automatic and effortless as breathing. Performances are his favourite thing. Performances are minutes upon minutes of uninterrupted time where he doesn’t have to think and can just _be_. He stays so wrapped up in each moment spent beside Tessa that the has difficulty focusing on their programmes as the complete stories they’re supposed to be. He can’t tell if it makes their overall performances better or worse, and he doesn’t care. They’re not competing so there’s no expectation that he watch and re-watch their skates, searching for cracks. He’s allowed to not care. The audiences seem happy, and that’s all that matters.

He ignores that the entirety of his happiness hangs on something so ultimately inconsequential.)

//

Things with Kaitlyn are good. They make each other laugh and they get along with each other’s families and the sex is—Scott’s just going to say that he really, really likes the sex.

Things with Tessa are good. He made a joke last week, a stupid one about not missing Marina at all when he sees small dogs, and it’s not the first joke he’s made but it’s the first one he can remember that’s off the cuff. Tessa’s smile was instant and split her face open, and Scott didn’t think it was just because of the French bulldog they’d spotted outside the rink in Osaka. This week he’s eating lunch in a park in Halifax, and Tessa sits next to him with her fancy take out salad, and the silence between them as they eat is a comfort, not an agony.

They message back and forth about tour logistics, except that once it’s late and Scott’s had a couple of beers and he taps out that he misses her and then hits send before he can think about what he’s doing. They’re between stops on the tour and it’s been a day or so since they’ve seen each other, so it’s not as damning as it could be, but he still feels it sharply in his stomach and his throat: that moment he realises what he’s done. Tessa messages back the next day to say they should grab a coffee sometime. Scott can’t figure out if she’s just being polite. He’s lost whatever it is you have that means you can ask someone something even when you’re terrified of the answer, so he just sends a message back to say he’d like that.

Tessa doesn’t bring it up again and Scott decides he doesn’t want to. It’s enough, that he still gets to love her on the ice.

(He ignores that it’s not enough.)

//

They do almost all the things together that everyone wants them to do: shows and interviews and appearances and living an unbreakable partnership. They don’t do the happily-ever-after, not together. Happily-ever-after had crashed and burned along with their Olympic dream. She hadn’t wanted him. She had wanted time, and it’s so fucking ironic that that was Scott’s greatest agony then but his greatest comfort now. It’s not that every day is necessarily better, but every day puts him further away from Sochi. Tessa had said she wanted time and Scott had known what she really meant. She wanted something more than she wanted him. She didn’t want him. It’s fine. They’re friends. It’s enough.

He’s seeing his family more, seeing Kaitlyn whenever he can. Tessa’s seeing Ryan. Scott knows because Tessa starts bringing him up in conversation. He can tell she’s nervous when she first mentions him; she knows he’s never liked Ryan. Soon it’s clear, from the amount of time they’re apparently spending with each other, that they’re together. Tessa talks easily about Ryan now and Scott talks about Kaitlyn all the time too. She’s the best thing in his life.

(He ignores that it’s easier now that he knows he doesn’t have a chance with Tessa anymore.)

//

Kaitlyn flies out to see one of their shows. He’s happy to see her and his knees sag with the relief of it when he picks her up at the airport. It’s the stupidest thing, but they go out for breakfast at a decent place Scott’s been to before and on a whim, he asks for toast to be added to his order. It’s surprisingly easy to just put a slice in his mouth; to chew and swallow without feeling like he’s going to be sick. He hates that. He’d added the margarine and strawberry jam provided but it still tastes like dust in his mouth.

Once he’s proved to himself he can do it he doesn’t feel the need to do it again. His girlfriend flew out to see him skate. His family and friends are there for him. He’s at a point now where he can reach out to people about the kinds of things he might look into doing after the tour. He gets to skate with Tessa most days. Most days are good days.

 (He ignores that he still has the dream, the one where he’s waiting to take the ice for their free dance and Tessa was right there, and now she’s not, and they haven’t done their breathing yet and they’re running out of time and she’s not there, and she’s still not there, and he winds up going out on the ice by himself because it’s their last performance and he has to do _something_ , but there’s no ice; nothing except vast, dark nothingness.)

//

Ryan comes to the Vancouver show. It’s been a couple of years since Scott’s seen him up close but he’s pretty much the same as he was back then. Big hair. Big smile. Big way of wrapping his arm around Tessa’s waist like she belongs to him. The cast go out for drinks afterwards to celebrate a successful tour, and Ryan goes too. Scott can’t not go, so he asks Chiddy to keep an eye out for him. Chiddy does, and it’s not such a bad night in the end. That’s something Scott can tell his therapist, he guesses.

He goes home and tries to shake the stardust from shoulders before he can start missing the tour. He unpacks and starts a load of laundry, grateful for the noise of the washing machine. He messages Tessa to say happy birthday and then can’t stop looking at his phone to see if she’s messaged back. He doesn’t hear from her, but he tells himself she’s probably just caught up in celebrating with Ryan out west, or in Ottawa, or wherever she is.

He opens his fridge out of habit but there’s nothing inside except a half-empty jar of relish and some ketchup, so he leaves his phone at home and goes grocery shopping. When he gets back, he puts everything away except for the eggs and the bread and starts gathering the other things he needs. Saucepan. Drinking glass. Bowl. Vinegar. Slotted spoon. Paper towel. He guesses there was a time when he had to follow instructions when he made poached eggs, or at least pay attention to what he was doing, but it’s as easy to him now as breathing. He gives himself over to muscle memory, making two eggs at a time because he doesn’t care how perfect they look. He makes toast and plates the eggs and it’s one step forward and two steps back because he can’t. Not tonight.

He gets Chinese delivered instead and emails some contacts he has about trying some stuff out over the next couple of months. He has a couple of things in his calendar already, small things that have the potential to turn into bigger things. If he wants. He has a beer with dinner and leaves it at that, and when midnight rolls around he heads to bed. He finds his phone when he straightens the covers, remembering he’d tossed it here for safekeeping before going out. Tessa had messaged ten minutes earlier to say thank you to him for wishing her a happy birthday.

He sits down heavily on the edge of the bed. He should think before reacting, probably, but it’s late and he’s tired, despite his quiet day, and he’s tired to death of thinking. Skating with Tessa again, feeling the power of what they created on the ice, had made him feel like he could do anything. He’d taken advantage of it. He’d used the energy he’d found to function in a way he hadn’t been able to manage in the weeks following Sochi. Tessa has her own life, with her own plans, and Ryan. He has Kaitlyn, and he’s going to figure out his plans, but it’s been less than 48 hours since he left Vancouver and he misses Tess like he’d miss his lungs if they were torn out of chest through his throat.

He’d thought he’d missed her after they’d come home and gone their separate ways, but the way he’d missed her then must have been watered down with hurt pride and anger, because it had been nothing compared to the way he misses her now. They’d started talking to each other about real things on the tour, in the spaces before and after performances. Tessa had told him she hadn’t slept well before the penultimate show because she was worried about her youngest niece was coping at school; Scott had told her how he’d gotten lost walking back to the rink with everyone’s coffees and had had to ask for directions and felt like an idiot. They hadn’t spoken about the uncertainty they both felt about a future after skating, but he’d seen it in her eyes when they’d been waiting to take the ice for the last show, and he was sure she’d seen the same in his. It had felt like they were friends again in those moments and Scott wants that. He wants it more than anything.

He’s tired of thinking, and he misses Tessa.

 _where are u_ , he messages.

He can tell Tessa’s writing something. She’s typing, and typing, and Scott braces himself. Against what, he doesn’t know. The worst, whatever that is. Scott feels like he’s already lived it. Finally, all she sends is, _Victoria_

It’s 9pm in BC. Not too late to call.

(He ignores the voice in his head that tells him this is a bad idea, that they’re broken, that he still needs her too much for this to end any way but badly.)

He calls Tessa.

//

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from ‘Til I am Myself Again’ by Blue Rodeo.
> 
> Hi, yes, I did lift the summary of this story (and in retrospect, the conceit) from _The Edible Woman_ by Margaret Atwood.
> 
> Yell with me on Twitter about how things got better: @/mfparaph


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